


To His Shock and Humiliation

by faantine (BreathingSpace)



Series: Persuasion [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: ! - Freeform, Gen, here's more sheer bloody minded silliness in cravats, hey lads guess who's back, pre persuasion!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 21:30:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2888609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BreathingSpace/pseuds/faantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“And I don’t trust you!” The other man said genially. “You look like a devious little guttersnipe waiting to pick my pocket of anything it was worth.”</p>
<p>“And you look like a man trying desperately to show his life hasn’t gone to ruin by putting on cheap graces.”</p>
<p>Montparnasse clinked their glasses together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To His Shock and Humiliation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> So I needed to write something over the holidays, and a bird told me that Lauren liked Montparnasse <3
> 
> (Rated T for mild body horror concerning faces and possible slurs.)

Montparnasse sat down heavily, wiped a hand over his face and then liberally over the belongings of everyone else in the dressing room. He rubbed the remaining greasepaint to flakes between his fingers and brushed them off his trousers. He didn’t his eyes off his left knee the whole time.

He wanted nothing but out. He didn’t _need_ it, per se, but God. There was nothing worse, _nothing worse_ than being twenty three, dressed as a marmoset, heavily in debt to a mask salesman and disenchanted.

The disenchantment was worse (and the mask salesman not much better). It was hard enough forgetting one’s lines without people looking as pleased as spiced wine as you did it. Harder still when they were your friends. And it wasn’t as if he could extricate himself from them, much as he didn’t like to admit he needed to. It wasn’t like he could extricate himself from anything any more.

He put his head heavily on the dressing table and kept it there. A brush was digging into his forehead. He didn’t care.

Joining the theatre had been one of the worst things he’d ever done. The first in a long line of wrong things which had made everything else wrong. It had tainted his every moment since (he’d spent many long nights working himself up to believe that everything would have come out better if it hadn’t been tainted with the filter of his workaday living. His complexion undoubtedly would have). At the time, his only other door had been the sea, and he’d wondered. Not too hard; (there would be rope burn everywhere, it wasn’t very difficult to see the flaw in _that_ plan), but he had still wondered. And when it got to the point where one was comparing one’s profession to becoming a cripple or a corpse at sea, one knew something had to change.

He picked his head up and wasn’t even that dismayed to see the brush had left a trail of paint through his hair.

He’d just had an idea that was clever as foxes, and no two ways about it.

~*~

There are some good places that make a living out of being bad, and more than one of them must be called the King’s Head. This particular establishment publicised its poor taste with a very literal representation of Charles I on its sign.

It didn’t cater for rouges, as most places seem to, but more for the self-styled ‘ _Rogue_ ’, or particular brand of young man with something to prove. They were often extravagant, often loud and more often than not caused more trouble than they could pay for. All of them were insecure, and few had so much as one real person that liked them, let alone friend. Montparnasse, though hardly a gentleman, felt that he had more than one quality which met the quota.

His plan, of course, was to drink.

It was a plan which has started well, particularly raising his eyebrow resolutely as he slipped out the side door at the rest of the company asking for his help with the flats. e was thankful for that opportunity, at least. The thrill of joy that that had given him lasted almost all the way to the inn. HIt had started to go downhill when he found himself squashed between a man who was particularly sweaty and one who was built like a brick shithouse at the bar. He was all the more thankful when his drink arrived than he would have been usually.

In turning to leave for a table, he managed to catch his pint arm against the man to his left. It was his misfortune that it was the larger one. He had hoped the man hadn’t seen, which he gave no intention of having done so. Montparnasse was quietly thankful for a moment and managed to weave his way slenderly through a few more patrons before the man turned, looked at the damp patch on his coat, looked at Montparnasse and called across the bar room; “You may want to see about your grey streak, sirrah. You look like a badger.”

Now, Montparnasse was a proud man with more than a small streak of vanity. However, he was also blessed with a sense of self preservation (which, in the spirit of woodland animals, did prompt many to liken him to a weasel). Under no ordinary circumstances would he have let this lie, exactly, but on fraying nerves and with a fraying temper, gave him some desperate urge to try and prove himself. He rounded on the stranger.

“And you, sir, look like a large piece of meat that has learnt to get up and walk around the place making grating comments.”

The man looked slightly taken aback.

“And not a particularly appetising piece of meat, either.”

In the moment it took for them to size each other up, Montparnasse realised that the man looked a great deal larger than he had a few moments ago. He also realised, with an inwards flump, that these next few moments were going to depend almost entirely on what he was like as a person. Montparnasse straightened himself up.

There was a tense silence.

The man’s face changed, as if something sly had slipped into place. Montparnasse had worn that look more than enough times to know what it meant. Without taking his eyes off Montparnasse, the man walked a line straight through ( _straight through)_ the crowd and Montparnasse, for all his best bravado, felt his insides turn slightly to water. He kept his chin up and his eyes level.

The man looked him dead in the eye and said “You’re drinking urine.”

It was probably the most original threats he’d ever heard.

“We’ll see about that, sir.” He cocked his head defiantly and wondered if it was as literal as it sounded. It didn’t sound as if there was much room for humour in there.

“Oh, I am seeing, sirrah.” The man tipped his glass, pouring half of it into Montparnasse’s. Some of it caught down his thumb and ran into his sleeve which, now he looked closer, didn’t seem to have been clean to begin with. Montparnasse watched him in astonishment. Surely he wasn’t-

“That should improve it, somewhat. I shouldn’t hold your hopes too high; there’s a limit to the miracles of drink done in this place. Before imbibing.”

Montparnasse narrowed his eyes. “And is that your way of asking for an apology?”

“The contrary. I’ve rarely been insulted so creatively to my face. I found it quite the novelty.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“And I don’t trust you!” The other man said genially. “You look like a devious little guttersnipe waiting to pick my pocket of anything it was worth.”

“And you look like a man trying desperately to show his life hasn’t gone to ruin by putting on cheap graces.” Montparnasse clinked their glasses together.

“That, sir, is precisely what I am.” The other man took a long swallow of what was left of his drink, and then added as an afterthought; “Although I’d hardly call them ‘graces’.”

“I would,” said Montparnasse, feeling slightly braver, as though the ice was beginning to thicken underneath him. “You’re dressed like you’re trying to pass for an earldom.”

“I’d certainly hope I wouldn’t sink _that_ low. I happen to be a duke.”

The corner of Montparnasse’s mouth lifted. “Are you.”

“I am, sirrah.”

 “Then allow me to congratulate your valet on his excellent work. That shirt could pass as new.” He passed a sly hand over the man’s shabby attire. (This, he remembered thinking, is most probably why most people don’t like me.)

“In his absence, I certainly shall.” After a pause, the man added, “I am, as it would seem, ‘between valets’”

Montparnasse looked at him levelly. “You are ‘between valets’”

“I’m hoping it’s a temporary problem,” he confirmed, taking a nonchalant mouthful of beer and looking away towards the inn’s corner.

“Need I ask what became of the last one?”

“He ran away.”

“He ran away.” Montparnasse repeated flatly.

He man picked up on his tone. “Not _from_ me, towards the postmistress.”

“Ah.”

“Yes.”

“I can see how that would be irksome.”

“It has been most irksome, and I can tell you that for free. You, however, are going prematurely grey.”

Montparnasse touched the greasy stripe on his hair self-consciously and winced. Ah.

“Yes, sir. It is from surplus of irk.”

The corner of the gentleman’s mouth twitched. Montparnasse returned it, still feeling watery, and held out his hand. “They call me Montparnasse. Thespian.”

“Pleased to meet you, thespian.”

“And you, duke. Do you have a name?”

The man cast a quick eye around his surroundings. Someone was passed out in the corner and there was a dog on the table. “Now’s no time for formalities. Call me ‘R’”.

“Of course it isn’t.” Montparnasse allowed himself a quirk and let go of the other man’s hand. “Shall we sit? Would you like me to pull our chair out for you?”

“One finds that being valetless provides one with the opportunity to practice many day to day activities. I can almost pull it out myself now.”

“The postmistress must be pleased the man she’s made of you.”

“And of him,” R said absently, tracing a finger around his glass before saying suddenly; “Tell me about yourself, thespian.”

“I thespianate.” said Montparnasse proudly, stretching his legs out under the table. “I’m rather good at it.”

“Are you, now?”

“I make a striking Hamlet.”

“Because of the tights?”

“Not exclusively, no.”

The man looked quizzical now. Montparnasse realised, with a dreadful jolt, that he might accidently be talking to a theatre fan. “Have you been in anything I may have heard of?”

Montparnasse waved a facetious hand. “This and that. A lot of Shakespeare. The Canterbury Tales. Minor runs of Wilmot.”

“Were you on stage tonight?”

“I was,” he said, with a hint of a smirk.

“And which of those were you in?”

Montparnasse seized up. “None of that particular selection,” came out rather higher than it might have, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Oh?”

“As a matter of fact, it was an inside work,” he said, trying to cover himself.

R lent forward on his hands. “A budding playwright? Do tell, I love amateur theatre.”

Montparnasse scratched his thumb sharply and carried on. “It concerned an ark.”

“Like Noah’s?”

“Somewhat. _Toby’s Ark_ , it’s called.”

“And I’ll hear of it.”

“You may well do,” Montparnasse said, strained.

“I take it it went well, then.”

“It did.” He took a large swallow of the mix of beer and cider that was in his glass (while Montparnasse was partial to cider, it seemed that R was not, which was not a situation that had been foreseen when he’d shared half of his drink with him. He wasn’t about to complain). R watched him do it and return his glass to the table. He kept watching him until Montparnasse felt he might break out into a sweat and said “It was a shambles, wasn’t it.”

“Yes.” And relief flooded through Montparnasse like a dam had just burst. He felt it warm up in his eyes. “Yes it was. It was absolutely awful, and may God preserve me from ever going out into the streets and showing my face again. I’d like to burn it off with acid.” Another, more sinister thought struck him suddenly. “You weren’t…. there were you?”

R snorted. “I most certainly was not. I find everyday life cheap and disastrous entertainment enough. If it had any semblance of going well at all, I daresay you wouldn’t be in here, drinking half my pint.”

“I daresay I wouldn’t, although who knows what I do for entertainment.”

“After tonight, it probably won’t be _Toby’s Ark_.” R remarked dryly.

“After tonight I’d rather flee the bloody country.”

“The theatre isn’t working out for you, is it Montparnasse.”

He could have denied it, but there was something so astute in that observation, he suddenly didn’t want to. It was like he’d been spoken to by the inner voice he’d been trying so hard to ignore.

“No, it isn’t.” He sighed and lent on his elbow. “Being a duke must be much more fun.”

“It has its ups and downs. But at least it does have ups.”

Montparnasse had nothing to say to that, so he just shrugged instead.

There was a serious kind of silence. R seemed to pick up on it too. He decided to lean back and break it (which Montparnasse was eternally thankful for) by saying “You could always turn to a life of vice.”

“Who’s to know I don’t have one running on the side?” Montparnasse said with mock vehemence.  “I do have the look of a pickpocket.”

“And family’s out?”

“Of course. Out of everything completely. Possibly even out of life itself, for all I know.”

R pushed his glass over the table so it hit Montparnasse’s again. “One can always tell. Takes one to know one, I suppose. Although I am blessed to have a spinster aunt.” he added thoughtfully.

“Yes. Convenient how those pop up.”

“Maybe there’s a factory somewhere. Anyway, from one orphan to another, if you _do_ happen to run a criminal enterprise, there’s one particular man I’d avoid. Likes to be tough, can’t remember his name, a right bastard to get on the wrong side of.”

“I’ll be sure to bear that in mind.”

R looked at him from hooded eyes. “I think you’d be good at it.”

Montparnasse nodded in agreement. “I think so too. I am most attentive to the people that I love. And I do so love myself.”

“You could do worse than to be attentive.” R agreed absently

Montparnasse raised an eyebrow, feeling suddenly reckless. “One might almost say it was a valet’s quality.”

R bought himself forward from where he’d been hanging off his chair and clasped his hands together. He looked suddenly thoughtful. “One might.”

~*~

And it was with the arrival of a carriage twelve hours later that Montparnasse discovered, to his shock and humiliation, that R was actually a Duke after all.

 


End file.
